friday morning. have a fantastic weekend. make sure to watch alex baldwin this saturday on snl alongside lewisburg dore of. "morning joe" starts right now. i love the president tlifrpg he's done a terrific job up till now. this could turn everything the other way. whoever advised him on this is -- ought to be represent pra manlded. in all honesty it's not going to happen, it's going to cause higher prices around here and make us less competitive. >> well, a day aftershocking republicans on gun policy, president trump just did the same thing on trade and he caught congress, wall street, and even those that work for him in the white house completely off guard. meanwhile, the administration is shedding staffers with more resignations reportedly on the way. and, of course, the word of the day is chaos. featured in headlines and lead stories across the morning papers, jeb bush, the guy i said

from the beginning i was voting for for good reason, he has to be thinking, i told you so. watch this. >> donald, you know, is great at the one liners. but he's a chaos candidate. and he'd be a chaos president. >> yeah, well, that ended up being right. and, as i said many times before, jeb would have actually been a good president. we could use one of those right now. welcome to morning joe. it's friday, march the 2nd. mika's going to be back on monday. willie, who's with us this morning? >> it's an extraordinary morning already. the president's up tweeting saying that trade wars are good defending the tariffs. that he will put on steel and aluminum next week. we're going to talk about it all with msnbc john howellman, and the anchor for world news

america katd did i kay. so he says trade wars are good they're easy to win making the case despite what most experts say, despite what gary cohn in his own administration says, he says they're good. >> well, yes. i mean, there's a long tradition of this in the republican party. you, of course, the last who believed this was herbert hoover, that didn't turn out really well for the -- >> how'd that go? >> did not turn out really well, deepened the depression. this is actually donald trump, i guess the populous, but this is, as was written in the new york post, this san itch of an ignorant economic belief of donald trump that he's held since the early 1980s. so orrin hatch when he says whoever's advising the great donald trump should be, you know, should be reprimanded or maybe lose their job, well, it's

donald trump who's advising donald trump, as always. and donald trump has believed this consistently for over four decades. and john heilman, but the cynic in me and a friend repeated this to me and i've been thinking about it all day, the cynic in me just has to believe that this is one of those things that donald trump had in case of emergencies to break the glass. like that morning that fbi agents went through paul manafort's door and suddenly was talking about transgender rights in the military and shocked everybody. of course nothing ever came of that. so he doesn't talk to anybody. we hear reports that he's angry and he's bouncing around the white house and he's raging about chaos and then suddenly he starts rambling on about this, springs it on everybody the next morning, and sure enough. we didn't talk about manafort's indictment, we didn't talk as much about hope hicks late

yesterday afternoon. people are looking at a collapsing stock market and looking at this economic policy that no one in their right mind supports. i wonder if this was another head bob. >> well, i mean, look, there's a little bit right now of kind of a madman at the wheel quality here in the white house where, i know we'll talk about it probably all morning, the degree of chaos, as you suggested, joe. a chaotic candidate become a chaotic president. we're at peak chaos and the president -- reporters are saying the president feels more isolated and he has a sense, a lot of people in the press said we've been on the brink of the situation unraveling. it seems like the president himself feels like his white house is on the brink of unraveling and he's lashing out on various ways. he's wanted on some level deep down in his heart of hearts he's wanted to start this trade war

for a long time. it's smeg tauted during the campaign. he said he was going to slap tariffs on china and various countries all throughout 2016. so now, as you say, he's kind of reaching back to an oldie but a go goody trying to fulfill a campaign promise. whether he will do this or not is a wholly different matter. i commend everybody, we've seen this on so many different fronts in the last few weeks, he says he's going to cut a deal on daca, this, that, or the other thing and then he doesn't do it. is this just a threat? will we get these tariffs a week from now? i'm not sure about that, i don't know. but it does feel a little improvisational at the moment. >> i don't think they are going to get these, willie. when you start looking at all the industries that are going to be hurt if you did have the steel tariffs. i just got to believe that he knows he really stepped over the line not only with his

conservative base but even with conservatives that didn't support him and independence. when he talked about seizing people's guns without due process, and i think he needed a smoke screen because that's all he worries about. he worries about his base, and i think he needed a smoke screen for about 24 hours so he throws it out there and, sure enough, who comes out but the three nra lobbyists last night that run washington, d.c.'s nra lobbyist organization that's radically out of touch with a lot of its own members, and sure enough they give him the clean bill of health. and so now the nra has sent the message to all of their members, hey, this guy is okay, he's not for gun control, he's for due process. and i wonder if donald trump just needed to buy some time. and anybody he did it and he didn't give a damn that billions were lost in the stock market yesterday, he got a smoke screen for 24 hours. >> you put your thumb on the

problem. a smoke screen crashes the stock market, it sends shockwaves around the world. have you not just china but our allies, canada, mexico, all over the place, europe scrambling to figure out what to do to counteract tariffs that could be set in place next week. as you said, that meeting from the nra last night, the signals from the president and his tweet and the nra in theirs saying don't worry, everything's fine, that thing that happened in the meeting with the senators, don't worry about it we got to him and he's back on our side. let's review ha happened. yesterday's abrupt announcement stunned so many people in the west wing, it rattled the stock market. president trump saying he will impose steep new tariffs on steel and aluminum imported in the united states. they gathered executives from steel and aluminum companies that had not been on his schedule the night before. aides describe it as a listening session but the president did much of the talk and he made big news. >> people have no idea how badly

our country has been treated by other countries, by people representing us that didn't have a clue or if they did then they should be ashamed of themselves because they've destroyed the steel industry, they've destroyed the aluminum industry and other industries frankly. we're going to be instituting tariffs next week. we'll be signing, perhaps some of you folks will be here, we'll see you next week. thank you, everybody. thank you very much. [ inaudible question ] >> unlimited period. >> is it 25%, sir? >> it will be 20 phi% for steel, it will be 10% for aluminum. it will be for a long period of time. >> the stock market did not take that news well quickly dropping the s&p 500 by 2% and wiping out the dow's year-to-date gains. senior officials told "the

washington post" that staff secretary rob porter who left after allegations of spousal abuse became public had worked with chief of staff john kelly to keep those advocating for tariffs from gaining access to the president. washington post reporter just texted saying things were wild, changing seemingly by the minute, and that no one knows what trump is going announce on a number of issues. it was the second day in a row republicans on capitol hill will taken aback by something the president said. the gop caucus was collectively stunned by trump's seeming embrace of many liberal gun control measures in wednesday's bipartisan meeting on sunday and then came thursday's tariff announcements. as of yesterday evening, nbc news could not confirm whether they had been warned. majority leader mitch mcconnell's office would not say and ways and means committee had not answered. in a statement paul ryan's office said, quote, the

speaker's hoping the president will consider the unintended consequences of this yand look at other approaches before moving forward. pennsylvania's republican senator pat toomey said imposing huge new tariffs on all kinds of imported steel is a big mistake that will increase costs on american consumers, cost them jobs. senatoron thune framed it this way. there is no standard operating practice with this administration. every day is a new adventure for us. joe. >> you know, and speaking of chaos, i mean, john thune is looking a lot like john cornyn these days. i mean, it's getting hard to tell those two apart. you hang out with -- we'll fix that in post, exactly. we're all prerecorded here. so katy kay it's interesting, we reported on the show a couple weeks ago. if you look at what china's doing and what the chinese

leadership is doing, they're looking outward. they've flung open their arms font world. every day you read china daily there's another leader from another major country there staying for a week trying to figure out how to have better trade relations with china. they've, of course, got the belt and road initiative which looks towards china dominance of the globe in 2050. we've got a president that is looking back to america that ceased to exist in the 1950s. he wants to rebuild the steel industry from the days following world war ii. it's really -- it's bizarre and the world must think how bizarre it is. what do other countries think about america, again, trying to relive the glory days of 1955? >> right. offer an industry that employs 140,000 people when there are industries that are using steel, of course, that are going to suffer and employ very many more

people than that. there's a sense that this yesterday, if these tariffs do get implemented, i agree we're not sure whether anything that the president says at the moment is going to come to pass, this is a major departure in 70 years of orthodoxy in american economic policy. and there's a reason that famous american economists who promoted free trade were also given the noble peace prize, because free trade has been linked since the second world war to global peace and stability. the more countries trade, the theory is the less likely they to go to war with each other. donald trump doesn't buy into that. you've got china throwing its weight around the world and looking outward. you've got russia throwing its weight around the world and looking out wards. just at a time when you need stability and anchor in the world, both united states and britain, my country, are retreating and looking inwards an you've got this emerging trade war happening. this is a toxic mix that we're

in and if the president pushes ahead with this, it's not too far a reach could this be the thing that pushes the world into a period of very considerable instability. >> yeah. and obviously a horrible beingic impact. and let's start with the people that would be hurt the most. you have donald trump saying i'm going to try by using government action, action by the centralized state to create a couple hundred thousand new jobs over the next decade. i'm going to punish 350,000 people, though, consumers every time they go out and buy their cars, i their cars are going to be more expensive. every time they build something, it's going to be more expensive. if they're business owners every time they build an office, it's going to be -- everything is made more expensive by this. and you think about how america does it right, we don't have to go back to the 1950s, let's just go back to 2006, 2007 when

fracking suddenly exploded, when american ingenuity without the help of the federal government, in fact, the federal government got in the way more often than not. we had people say, hey, kwwhy don't we drill sideways and see what happens. america is going to be the top exporter of oil. nobody believed that ten years ago but that was letting the market do it. here donald trump is distorting the market. he's perverting basic economic realities and it is the american consumer, don nip, as yony, and liberal democrat that's going to get crushed. but even you, a guy that reads marx before he goes to bed of course, groch cho marx, of course, this will crush american

consumers. >> this week if you were concerned about president trump being our president, you really felt the noose tight women hope hicks leaving and the kushner story and the new conspiracy leading directly interest trump from mueller's point of view, you really see if the and you're starting to see the beginning of a cornered donald trump and what is he capable doing at the expense of the world or the united states or the consumer to save himself. and we're -- i'm concerned that this is a har bon jer of things ton come in what will he do with north korea at the expense of the rest of the world? what will he do in any scenario do this kind of shiny toy thing? hope hicks leaving is very scary. i mean, if you know people that have run companies or people in organizations there's always one or two people in there that run a company that you go to that is somehow the sanity check or somehow the calmer. that's not there anymore. and as the mueller news continue

tighten and the kushner news continues to tight ren this is a man with his hand at the controls. and, yes, a trade war is very concerning. what are the other things he's capable of doing at the expense of all of us to save or protect or deflect when it comes to his own hide? i'm concerned this is some very scary things of donald trump, a cdt, a new world we're living in. >> you know, willie, last two weeks it seems every day we've been cheommenting about a chaot president who's taking it to the next level, the level of chaos literally increases by the day. we yesterday had vladimir putin basically threaten nuclear war against us saying he had the weapons that the united states couldn't stop and was -- delivered the sort of speech that in any other administration

would have had an immediate and swift response. here, donald trump even -- didn't even say anything about it. and not even because he's bowing down to vladimir putin, but because he is so ensnarled in his own problems inside the white house. >> when you have a president of the united states who's time is consumed by protecting his own backside, that's a terrible place for the country to be because nothing is about the country in front of him, it's all about the pressures that be being put open him. we had nicolle wallace's reporting we'll talk about that m.r. mcmaster is on his way out. you have to imagine gary cohn is look for the door this morning if these tariffs are put in place. all of a sudden hope hicks is gone, the pieces fall away and you have a man isolated and surrounded by people who may not have the country's best interests in mind. let's go to former nato supreme allied commander dean of fletcher, chief international of

security and diplomacy analyst for nbc news. let's start with the tariffs. we've seen the reaction from around the world, germany calling them unacceptable, canada doing the same. what would be the impact as somebody who sees the map and looks at the globe and understands how these pieces interact with each other. a 25% tariff on steel, 10% on aluminum come together united states, what would that mean for the world economy? >> i currently run a graduate school of international relations. we spend a lot of time looking at sbashinternational economic, finance, and business. there are no winners in trade wars, full stop. and we know that because as you alluded to earlier, about 100 years ago, 1918 we come out of world war i, we isolate ourselves from the world, we reject the league of nations and then we put in place the holly smoot tariffs? how'd that turn out? well, we cracked the global economy and you can drop a plum

line to fash six and the rise of the second world war. i think this is a bad day globally and it's not just the impact here in the united states domsly on other industries. it's how our partners receive us as withdrawing from the world. that's a bad day by any measure as you look at the world. >> what about the speech joe just referred to, president vladimir putin of russia talking about missiles, nuclear miflds th -- missiles that he says he has? what's the impact of that speech and the lack of response to it so far? >> this is kind of the three ring circus. inside the country we have ourselves pulling apart, hammering at each other. abroad, our allies are disconcerted and discouraged. and then we see actors like vladimir putin. crime is always where motive meets opportunity. he's seeing an opportunity. in terms of the speech, it

looked a lot like "q" in the james bond movies showing us all the things in the arsenal. the bad news is there are grains of truth in all those things. we've been watching those develop with u.s. intelligence and now we see putin confident enough in this chaotic world to kind of roll those out. picture a soviet leader showing video of missiles flying at the united states, it's inconceivable. it's a result of the chaos we're seeing generated, i would say, from washington, d.c. >> we're going to hear from president putin in a new interview in a little while. stay with us we want to talk much more about that speech saying russia's armed with new highly capable nukes and there's nothing american defense systems can do about it. we'll show you how the state department's responding but first a look at the forecast. >> this nor east surreally getting powerful in a hurry. we've had reports of a foot of snow in the lakes of western new york, power is out in many areas, it's a heavy wet snow. we have pictures near syracuse

new york which have about 5 to 8 inches on the ground. buffalo new york, cleveland, eerie all getting about 6010 inches of snow. a lot of schools canceled in these areas. here's the nor easter. it's now located just south of long island off the jersey shore and it will sit here and drift during the day today and insurance tense phi. blue is the snow from cleveland to buffalo to sear rescues and albany new york. albany you went to bed thinking about 1 to 3 inches your forecast is now 10 to 12. this was one of the worst fraftsds that's changed overnight. as far as the winds go, d.c. 56 miles per hour. doe minute nin energy now reporting 120,000 people already without power in virginia and eastern north carolina. winds picking up in boston at 51. we have 76 million people under high-wind warnings or high-wind advisories. by the time today's over we'll likely have a number close to a million, maybe over a million with people without power. the worst of the wind forecast is areas of soirn new england,

boston included. a lot of travel delays at the airports if not cancellations. saturday looks better for everyone as the storm will be exiting. new york city, received heavy rain overnight, winds were only in the 20-mile-per-hour range because the storm is close to us. as it moves away even new york city will have gusts of 50 to 60 miles per hour. you're watching "morning joe". we'll be right back. don't we need that cable box to watch tv? nope. don't we need to run? nope. it just explodes in a high pitched 'yeahhh.' yeahhh! try directv now for $10 a month for 3 months. no satellite needed. on the only bed that adjusts on both sides to your ideal comfort, your sleep number setting. does your bed do that?

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animation that depicted a nuclear attack on the united states, i mean, that's something that we certainly did not enjoy watching. we don't regard that as the behavior of a responsible international -- attack being conducted on united states as being a responsible action. >> the state department responding to russian vladimir putin touting his nuclear arsenal which he doubled down on in that exclusive interview with megyn kelly who's on assignment in moscow. he said it includes several highly sophisticated weapons, which he claims are imper veous to defense system. he says efforts to contain russia have failed, face it and accused the west of, quote, ignoring us.

nobody licensed to us, well listen to us now. he preceded his show weapons in action which included a north korea esque which included an attack on mainland america, joe. >> that's very nice. thank you, vladimir. so, admiral, i'm just wondering again so much as you know, as we've all said over the past decade or so that so much of russia's foreign policy is driven by resentment. resentment of what happened as the cold war ended, resentment that the united states became the sole super power, and they've been reacting since then. i'm just wondering how much of this show yesterday had to do with the news that the united states was stepping up assistance to ukraine, that we were sending over 200 antitank weapon systems to ukraine and whether that's actually what

putin is responding to. >> i think that played into it, joe, and those javelin missiles are the right move to accepted those. they're defensive in character, they'll stop russian armor rolling out of da nesk in the southeast. but i think it's something going on domestically any russia. he's got an election on march 18th, he's playing to his base, as we say around here. we're fine talking about all the unguided missiles in washington, i think we're seeing some of that over in moscow. frankly, once he's done playing with the base, we're left with a strategic relationship that's in tatters. i will say i don't think we're quite in a cold war yet but i can see it from here. >> admiral, i just wonder while we're all focusing on who said what to whom doctoring the transition when it comes to

russia and what members of the administration were trying to strike deals with russians and whether donald trump has some side deal with vladimir putin or he's compromised, it does seem like u.s. foreign policy, as we mentioned before, actually is stabilizing and it appears that in our relations, in our defensive structure towards the russians that it is mattis and perhaps his partner tillerson who seems to be winning the day. what's your thought on that? >> i said for a while that i think u.s. foreign policy at the moment in many ways is shockingly normal compared to other things we see occurring around the white house. so i think policy toward russia is about right. i think our policies in ausha are roughly in the right dimension. we could pick at some of these things. where i get concerned are three things. one is withdrawing from the

transpacific partnership, big trade agreement that would have given us great leverage in asia, we walked away. second, pulling out of the climate accords. we're the only nation in the world who are not in the paris climate accords. and number three, i want to draw a line under these tariffs. this would be a truly bad move. >> admiral, all along people have said that, you know, donald trump was going to be radically different when it comes to world affairs. i agree with you up until now it's basically been a continuation with a little bit more heated rhetoric. but these tariffs really would mark a turning point, wouldn't they, in terms of donald trump's presidency, but also in world affairs. i mean, the degree to which trade relationships type countries together and keep us from the brink of conflict, i don't think can be overstated when you look back at the sweep of history of the last hundred years. and he's about to potentially up end all of that if he goes ahead with these tariffs. he says this morning trade wars are easy, they can be won

easily. we don't know what the retaliation will be from china and other countries. >> indeed. as i said earlier on the show, there are no winners in trade wars, you're exactly right. and the worst part of this is we can build a strategy to step up our game with russia, we can work on a long game strategy with china, but we can't do any of that without allies, partners, and friends. that's our nation's greatest asset in the international realm. if we start doing things that drive the canadians away from us, the europeans away from us, we weaken ourselves at precisely the moment vladimir putin is playing this big hand of aggressive military card. it's a bad mismatch in strategy and we ought to think more coherently about our choices going forward. these tariffs would be a very bad idea. >> admiral james said there are no winners nay trade war. the president tweeting, quote, trade wars are good and easy to

win. admiral, thanks as always. we appreciate your time. coming up -- >> yeah. >> what do you say to that? what do you sty that? trade wars, he says, are good and he seds -- he says they're easy to win. what -- i have no idea what you even say about that. >> it's. >> it's so ridiculous and goes against every economic reality of the past 50 or 60 years n. and may i add, this fear of free trade must look especially preposterous to our allies across europe who have seen the united states of america over the past 75 years thrive from a free trade system more than any other country on the planet. there's not a close second. >> i mean, not just thrive in the united states, but promote the ideals of free trade around the world and see how that has

benefited us. look, it was the u.s. that pushed free trade and free trade for europe after the end of the cold war. it was the u.s. that pushed free trade for eastern european countries. this really makes no sense. it doesn't even help american consumers. you're going to see a small hike in the price of steel and aluminum. the america economy is robust, it can probably withstand it. but the big factor where the president is totally wrong is that this is dpgoing to be easyo win because we don't know how other countries will react to this and it breaks up the long hard work america has done of building up these alliances. >> coming up, when it comes to negotiating with the president, it's often said it's the last person in the room who wins the day. last night he met with the nra. what that means for gun measures he embraced a day earlier. "morning joe" is coming right back.

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welcome back to morning joe. joining us now a chairman of the national republican congressional committee, republican congressman steve stivers of ohio. great to have you with us. >> great to be on. >> you come from a state of ohio that would be heavily impacted

by the steel tariff, the auto making industry for example. you said you heard about this idea early yesterday morning, tried to intervene in some way to stop it. what happened next? >> unfortunately i don't agree with the direction on this one and the president was elected, he gets to make the call and he made the call. but, you know, we'll see where it goes as long as this is a standalone issue, it might not be catastrophic, i don't think it's a good idea. i don't think trade wars end well. as long as it doesn't rachet up and get worse for our rerk i think we can get through this. there are few people who make steel, but there are a lot more people that use steel than make steel. there are other ways to deal with dumping like the world trade organization we could do complaints there, there are other things we can do to handle -- there are legitimate issues that the president's trying to address with dumping but i think there was a better way to address it. >> you weren't alone in trying to intervene.

there were people inside the west wing. gary cohn said tariffs are a terrible idea. who do you think prevailed upon him over the advice of people like you? >> i don't try to get in the middle of what happened. i think in the end the president prevailed. he did what he wanted to do and made the decision he thought was right and he's the president of the united states, he gets a chance to make those decisions. >> congressman, could you try to explain to people who may not understand how much this would hurt carmakers across the midwest, the same carmakers that the united states decided to bail out after 2008 and even though i usually loath to bail out any companies, i actually supported the auto bailout because i knew it wasn't only the carmakers but it was also the chain of businesses underneath the car makers that would be devastated. what's the impact of this sort of tariff and how many of those

carmakers may just decide, you know what? we will go to mexico and sell our cars because we'll have cheaper steel and could can produce cheaper cars and then send them to america for people to buy? >> well, i think it will have a little bit of an impact and we'll just have to wait and see how it shakes out. but one of the things that happens when you put a tariff on an item is the domestic price comes up because it's protected. so it will raise some prices for suppliers, not just in auto, but anybody that cans anything, whether it's beer or vegetables or the canning industry, anybody that use steel. so it will have an impact, but this thing was just announced yesterday, it hasn't been implemented yet. i think there's some time to work on it and we'll see what happens. and there's a legitimate disagreement among some people about whether it will work or not. i do not believe a tariff say good idea, but, you know, certainly there are some people who think it is a good idea and we need to come to a common understanding and mabling sure

-- make sure we don't get ourselves into a trade war because people will retaliate against us from other countries because when they see our tariff they're going to add tariffs and it doesn't usually end well. we just need to at least contain it and hopefully maybe even stop it. >> congressman, i want to ask you just shift away from this a little bit and look down the field here at the politics of 2018. we talked about this on the show before on a couple of occasions. you know, the generic ballot has kind of looked a little bit better for republicans for a couple weeks and now seems to have shifted back in the democratic. you have had a couple retirements from the party, committee chairs. if you look out there right now, make the case for me that there's not a blue wave that's about to engulf you guys in 2018. >> sure. i don't think there's a blue wave because i think our policies are working. unemployment at a 50-year low. consumer confidence at near record highs. the economy is doing very well on the foreign policy and military front.

we're doing better in afghanistan, we're doing better in iraq. we're doing better pushing back in syria. we're making a difference in people's lives. the tax cut is not only putting money in their pockets but improving their job prospects. we're going to campaign on our policies and i feel comfortable. the ka generic ballot was one poll, we just wept through the olympics, i would throw that one out. if you look at the sample it had 35% democrats, 15% republicans. that explains the -- >> except the fact that democrats keep winning special elections not just all throughout 2017, in special elections either they're winning them or even the ones where they're losing they're closing gaps 30 points, 40 points in some cases. just where on electoral politics where you can point to as a sign of optimism? >> georgia six that we had our special election. let me tell, you special elections have such low turnout, people are only coming out for that. there is clearly democratic excitement advantage, but we

proved in georgia six we know how to motivate our voters and get them out. >> this is important, i want to ask you just as a republican congressman. obviously guns front and center and obviously. >> yes, sir. >> a lot of your folks, a lot of your people say let's raise the age to 21 maybe and bump stocks and background checks. are you a dad? you have kids? >> i have a 5-year-old and 8-year-old and we all want our kids to be safe and i'm for the things you just talked about. >> so that point, and dad to dad, because everything else i find is just doesn't matter until we get to assault weapons. you can't believe as a dad that we should have -- and i don't want to have a slippery slope discussion, i want to have a dad discussion, that assault weapons, that military attack weapons belong in our stores, belong available to massacre children. you can't as not a republican, not as an nra guy, not as -- you can't believe that that's right, that these weapons should be available that could kill our

children. if god forbid a million times that was within of your children, would you actually talk to me as a dad and say -- >> i will, and i'm a dad and i'm for some issues on gun but i've been in the military 34 years, i'm a brigadier general of the army national guard and i can tell you an ar-15 is nothing like an m-16 or an m-4 because what matters is not cosmetic features and what it looks like on the outside, it's the guts and what it does on the inside. and an m-4 and an m-16 have automatic fire. an ah-15 say semiautomatic weapon. it's not a military weapon it's meant to look like it. >> somebody can go in and kill 50 people with one sweep, i'm not talking about logistics of a gun, i'm talking about we all have children. >> and that's why many of us are for getting rid of bump stocks and any device that takes a semiautomatic weapon and turns it into the characteristics of

an automatic weapon. there are 2.5 million ar-fifteens in this country already and unless you're going to go in and get rid of those, we need to be talking whole listally about school safety. we need to require every school to have a plan. we need them to assess what they need and give them grants to give them help for what they need. we need to address guns, i believe that. we need to look at our gun policies and figure out what we can get done. there's a bipartisan bill in the senate from senator corker and murphy that i believe we need to take up immediately and get done. i think we need to do something about mental health and we need to have a conversation about in our society it's not legislated about how we treat each other. that's why joyce beatty and i started a civility and respect caucus and there's a lot of bullying going on. you know, sometimes it's in our schools, sometimes it on cable news. and we need to talk about the fact that how we treat each other and how that matters and what bullying means to people, as parents we need to look at what we're letting our kids be exposed to with violent video

games and violent movies. all those things -- >> congressman, i mean, i certainly agree with all of that and i think those are all things that are very important, especially important since we have a leader that doesn't show respect to other people and bullies on social media. but i want to go back really quickly. >> sure. >> and challenge you just on you saying that the ar-15s don't resemble military style weapons. >> i said they resemble this in features. that's the way they resemble them. >> it's not just cosmetics. you can talk to brian mass who as you know congressman from south florida, republican who's a war hero who lost his legs in afghanistan saying that an ar-15 is much like the weapons that he used in war. i've talked to vietnam vets who were over in vietnam for four years. i've read reports in the pentagon saying that one of the problems with vietnam is that they didn't use an ar-15 which

has a lower caliber so it kicks less. you can -- you don't have the problem that they had carrying around the heavier weapons in vietnam, it's lighter, you can shoot more, you can kill more people. the pentagon and a lot of other people in studies found that actually the ar-15 was a far more lethal weapon than weapons that our soldiers used in vietnam and many people thought and were saying after vietnam, sort of an after-action report that one of the mistakes was that we didn't let them use ar-15 because they would have killed more vee yacht kahn. so you're one of the few people that suggestings it doesn't bear a remarkable resemblance to a weapon of war. you can go into that? >> look at the inside of the weapon and what it does and the rate of fire, that's what determines what the weapon can do. and so it's not about what it

looks like on the outside, what wl it's a charging handle, whether it has a flash suppresser, it's about what the weapon can do. and frankly i agree we need to do some things on guns. i'm not here saying we shouldn't deal with guns. i'm saying that frankly we need to get something done and get something done immediately that can make a difference. but we need a wholistic approach. if we don't go a wholistic approach, it's not going to have an impact. >> i completely agree with you on a wholistic approach. we've been talking about it since newtown and all the things that you talked about, i agree with completely. i just instead of asking you the question again, just, again, i'm sure you're more of an expert on this than i am, but, again, it's far more than cosmetics that makes the ar-15 a far more lethal weapon, again, the pentagon and other experts saying a far more lethal weapon than even what our soldiers used in vietnam. >> i've not seen that study, joe. frankly an m-16 is far nor

lethal than an ar-15, far more lethal because of the rate of fire. they use similar calibers, but an m-16 that we the rate of fir >> but you know, congressman, people watching this will say you're having a semantic argument about the cosmetics of a gun and it was enough to kill 17 high school kids. it was enough to wipe out a classroom full of first graders. >> it was and that's why we need action and we need to make something happen immediately and we need to talk about safety -- >> you need to get rid of the assault weapons, you know what you need to do. >> okay, okay, let's be respectful and congressman we greatly appreciate you being with us and we really appreciate your service to america in uniform, and, yes, your service here and also for coming and talking to us about this respectfully. we're indebted to you. thank you so much. >> thank you, joe. president trump has called

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coming up, the president already is looking for his fifth communications director. now we're learning he'll be looking for his third national security adviser as well. we'll have that exclusive new reporting from nbc's nicolle wallace. plus, democratic senator bill nelson of florida on whether he thinks the president is serious about new gun control measures. "morning joe" is back in a moment. this is the story of green mountain coffee roasters dark magic told in the time it takes to brew your cup. first, we head to vermont. and go to our coffee shop. and meet dave. hey. why is dark magic so spell-bindingly good, he asks? let me show you. let's go. so we climb. hike. see a bear. woah. reach the top. dave says dark magic is a bold blend of coffee with rich flavors of uganda, sumatra, colombia and other parts of south america. like these mountains, each amazing on their own. but together? magical.

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try directv now for $10 a month for 3 months. no satellite needed. how long ago did i declare war on north korea and little rocket man? >> four months? >> wrong, it was last friday, see? i'm bending time, let's keep the chaos coming and shake things up around here. >> trump, this guy's the chaos candidate, am i right? >> jeb, you're a very nice man but you're basically a little girl. folks, this is true, i got hold of jeb's birth certificate and full disclosure, his real name is jebra. >> let us explain why we opened this hour with those two soundbites. amid another rough morning, president trump took to twitter in the pre-dawn hours this morning to go after "saturday night live." around 5:45 a.m. this morning

the president tweeted, alex b d baldw baldwin whose dying mediocre career was saved by his impersonation of me on "snl" now say says playing djt was agony for him. alex, it was also agony for those who were forced to watch, you were terrible, bring back daryl hammond, much funnier and a far greater talent. he deleted that tweet and then changed it to alec baldwin. >> apparently the whole of the white house staff has not left the building. there's one proofreader and copy editor. >> so joe in the midst of all the things we've been talking about, what was on the president's mind at 5:45 a.m. was alec baldwin's impersonation of him. >> and willie the stock market had a mini crash yesterday. i'm not sure what the word would be but a lot of people lost a

lot of money and in large part it was because of a reckless policy he put out there without saying anything to anybody. i found it so fascinating we had james stravidis, you asked him what his biggest concerns were and he said donald trump moving america from the system that we have profited from that made us the most rich, powerful economic engine in the history of the world and he talked about us withdrawing from tpp, from the paris accords and now these tariffs and the promise of the trade war. it's so reckless and yet instead of looking around at his white

house and chaos, he's attacking alec baldwin. >> in his other tweet of the morni ing that we have, he says quote, trade wars are good and easy to win. he says we win big, it's ease any a trade war. >> so john heilemann, how do you put the last two weeks in perspective? we've had, as jeb bush said, a chaos presidency which jeb predicted a very long time ago. it is a chaos presidency but the rate of chaos continues to expand. we hear now robert mueller's investigation is going to be moving on and indicting more russians but this time it will be the russians that were involved in the hacking and dissemination of the dnc e-mails and now asking -- trying to tile -- draw a line between those russians and the trump

campaign. what's next and what can this republican party do as they move towards elections in the fall that could spell doom for their party. >> those were big questions but joe i think it's obviously right that we have been saying for a year at various times that it looked like the white house and the administration were on the brink of unraveling. i think one of the most important things that's different now is that the president seems to feel that, too, and he is kind of lashing out and trying to basically -- he's like there's a little "home alone" quality here. he has wanted to do all this stuff that he's now doing for a long time. there's -- there's not much restraint on the president over the course of the last year but there's been some. now he's just doing what he wants to do. this is trump being trump so he's announced that he's wanted to slap these tariffs on china, on certain products for a long time. he campaigned on it but the

globalist, the free traders, the establishment people around him have restrained him. now he's like "forget it, i'm going to do that." he wants to have negotiations on camera and have the meeting with congress people and whether it's over guns or over a lot of other things he wants to be -- he wants to bring the reality show to life. he's basically like acting out and lashing out and there's no question that there's a series of things you can point to. you can point to the way in which the security clearance story started with rob porter then pointing the finger at jared kushner, how that opened the door to kushner's political vulnerability and how that started to fall apart and how that raised the stakes and created a degree of chaos but the most important thing, the thing you can't overlook is the thing you pointed to. as bob mueller's net seems to widen and tighten at the same time around the white house, the degree of chaos, the exodus of staff, the level of panic, and

trump's own defensiveness all seem to be moving in lockstep with that. mueller is getting -- every week he gets closer and closer to the oval office and the closer he gets the more everything else seems to fall apart completely. >> donny deutsch, you and i knew donald trump for a decade before he became president of the united states, knew him in social settings and of course as i said at the top of the show i announced very clearly in december of 2015 that i was voting for jeb and then when he got out i said i was voting for kasich and, of course, got nasty tweets because of that but all that being said you and i and just about anybody else that we have spoken to that knew trump, even his closest friends -- if he has close friends -- are all

shocked that he was this bad. do you find it hard to believe that the guy you knew for a decade was actually -- has turned out to be this bad? i know there are people who say how couldn't you know, he attacked rosie o'donnell in 201201 2006, how could you not -- i understand that, i understand all of that. that said, people that knew him for a decade, even though we didn't vote for him could have never assumed -- or at least i couldn't have assumed would have been this unmoored, this horrific. >> i was friends with him -- as anybody you'd call a friend, as close as anybody could be to be called a friend for 20 years and my explanation is always this. i always said not a guy i would want to be in a fox hole with but i felt he was in on the joke, very sharp -- >> in on the joke. that's the key. in on the joke. >> kind of a lounge act, that he was playing and his eyes were

twinkling, like a howard stern. howard knows what he's doing and he's a different guy and i always felt, you know what? it was something charming -- wouldn't want to be in a fox hole with him, you had to check your pockets when he left, i'm not saying he's the most moral high ground, but nothing as far as the twisted in many cases cruel and evil and also kind of unhinged as we're seeing now and what scares me and this week more than ever you felt something shift. you felt the noose tight ng and i would challenge this trade war thing. i challenge people to watch wag the dog which was a movie where the candidate had a scandal, a sexual scandal in his inner circle, created a fake war with albania. we're not in a fake -- i am truly terrified of what he is capable of doing. i know this is insane, but nothing short of starting a war

to protect his hide and we have to start to look at this latest tariff situation this clearly cost a lot of people a lot of money but not lives, what is this man cornered, dangerous, unhinged now, a very different man than 20 years ago, what is he capable of doing? >> and i underline what you said, he was always in on the joke and willie, you knew him as well and, again, yes he could be cruel publicly, he could be unkinded, but the level of chaos i think has far exceeded a lot of people's expectations and the problem is again, what donny said, cornered. donald trump is proving to be a very dangerous person, a very dangerous person for his own white house, a very own dangerous person for people who are investing in the stock market and a very dangerous person for those of us who care about u.s. interests globally. >> well, he may have started a

trade war for starters. he may not have started a war but if he goes through these steel and aluminum tariffs we'll get into a trade war. five sources are telling nbc news that white house national security adviser h.r. mcmaster could leave the trump administration as early as next month. the potential departure caps a week of chaos in the west wing where infighting, staff shakeups, allegations and investigations have left the president's aides rattled and demoralized. cnn reporting the fbi has been looking into an international business deal involving first daughter and senior adviser ivanka trump. the report not yet confirmed by nbc news claims investigators are looking at the negotiations and finances surrounding trump international hotel and tower in vancouver. this after son-in-law and senior adviser jared kushner lost access to high-level intelligence and faced a report about white house meetings and business loans. white house press secretary sarah huckabee sanders gave a firm no when asked if the president wanted to get rid of

kushner. but the answer less definitive for attorney general jeff sessions. >> reporter: does the president want to get rid of his attorney general? >> not that i know of. >> reporter: as it relates to the tweet, could you elaborate on the relationship between the president and attorney general? does president trump believe his attorney general is disgraceful? >> the president's made his frustrations very clear, i don't have anything else to add. >> meanwhile, politico reports the president's tariff decision is driving out chief economic adviser gary cohn who some saw as a future chief of staff. the "new york times" reports cohn warned chief of staff john kelly that he might resign if trump went ahead with the tariff plan. the recent instability drew criticism from ex-communications director anthony scaramucci who said of kelly, quote, does the president want to lose everyone because of general jackass? at an event celebrating the department of homeland security yesterday, kelly acknowledged the turmoil with a joke. >> the last thing i wanted to do is walk away from one of the

great honors of my life, being the secretary of homeland security but i did something wrong and god punished me i guess. [ laughter ] >> the week was summed up by the "new york times's" maggie haberman who says within the white house they're comparing the mood and sense of chaos to the early weeks of the administration with a messy travel ban rollout. we're joined by sam stein and jeremy bash both. mo hope hicks out this week, sounds like h.r. mcmaster is out according to nicolle wallace's reporting. gary cohn could be gone. who's at the wheel of american government? >> it makes you wonder if he does think this is "the apprentice" and every week he has to get rid of a cast member. the other question is who wants to come in. you used to have to replace these people with the b-team. this is the b-team to maybe the

c-team. but if you talk to any professional republican in washington, d.c. they would rather be drugged than work there and they may have to be because it's so chaotic you don't know what the policy process is, you know you could be undercut by the president at any moment and you're starting to see a manifestation of a huge staffing shortage happening in realtime. we talked about this yesterday. but to your point about the tariffs, donny, it's not so much -- it may be because he's impulsive and wants to change the subject but it's the product of the fact that one of the key cogs holding up the tariffs was rob porter. rob porter didn't want the tariffs to go through, he made sure they didn't get to his desk and he's gone and because he's gone and hasn't been replaced trump is able to impulsively announce these tariffs at a random meeting when this whole process -- this policy process was a shamble. so this is a major existential crisis for this administration and doesn't look like it will get better.

>> and you have the problem with staff members who know in they get in there and have to testify before bob mueller or the house and the senate intel committees that's $20,000, $30,000, $50,000 a day. it's cost prohibitive and you have at the very least -- we said this a year ago, if you're in the white house you have to retain an attorney. i remember the president's attorneys saying they're fine, we'll take care of them. well, they're not. that's one problem, the second problem is it looks like this mueller investigation is about to pick up with indictments of russians involved in the hacking and dissemination of these dnc e-mails. are we turning the corner to the most serious phaseover the robert mueller investigation? >> i think so, joe, if you think about the conduct during the 2016 election as two main buckets, the propaganda bucket and the hacking and dissemination bucket, we saw the

indictments two weeks ago of 13 russians and the russian organizations with regards to propaganda but there's a lot of propaganda during the campaign. the trump team could claim well, this had no impact. i don't necessarily agree with that. some political activities, some are legal, some are illegal. hacking is a totally different story. there's no way the trump campaign can claim they were passive beneficiaries. why do i say that? because george papadopoulos knew the russians had "dirt" on hillary. the trump tower meeting was set up purposefully to discuss "dirt on hillary" and everyday during the fall campaign candidate trump talked about wikileaks, talked about the e-mails so they had knowledge of what the russians were doing and perhaps they had more involvement and bob mueller will look directly at that. >> and hope hicks leaves, katty kay, leaves the day after her testimony on capitol hill. reports are she had been planning to leave for a while

but it's interesting she left the day after going through that ordeal, very expensive ordeal, not being able to answer basic questions about what did donald trump make you lie about? when did you lie for the national security adviser, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. i don't know many people who have a choice that would want to continue going through that process. >> right. and on top of that, hope hicks goes back to the white house and the president is mad at her for saying she told white lies on his behalf. you look at the structures of the white house and the competing forces between the guardrails that are meant to be in place to stop the president from doing things that are rash and his own instinct, he announces the trade deal, has the meeting with the senators about gun controls. you never know what he will do. sam, there's interesting reporting on how the president

is so fed up with john kelly and the idea he has to follow rules, that he's had it and going to try to do things his way but when he does this is what we get, the yay i don't say scenario. >> well, there's a degree of he would listen to whoever was the last person in the room and anyone working on a fix to dhaka got this whiplash because he would say one thing that seems supportive of a solution so there's always an impulsiveness to what he was doing but what's happened here is that as his staff structure dwindled, as the buffers around him have gone away he's felt like he can fill the void so this tariff announcement is a perfect example. he's been asking for tariffs for months. he wants to do this. it's something he's talked about all the time. while a while he had a structure of advisers that said no, this is a terrible idea, don't do it.

now there were people in the white house who encouraged it but they were bottled up in what you would traditionally be a normal policy process, figuring out what the rules should be then it goes away and he comes out and says you know what? 20% on steel, 15% on aluminum, doesn't specify what countries will be targeted, doesn't even as i understand it wait for the legal rules to be written so you could roll out the policy. that's terrible policy making and it affects the market and his perception in the media and it affects him because he's tweeting about how easy it is to win a trade war which is crazy. >> >> and people are talking about this terror announcement, the problem with the president using smokescreens, it has implications. our allies in europe and canada and asia are saying this is up

acceptabl acceptable. a government like the one you've worked in for a lot of your life can't function responding and reacting to whatever the women is for the white house. >> it's terrible foreign policy. i liken it to when the president came back from his first international trip and he had awkward moments to with our nato allies and what's the first thing the white house did? pulled out of the paris climate accords. in some ways, every time there's heat on the white house from a political perspective on russia, the president reverts to this nativist nationalist america first ideology. it's bad foreign policy and it's bad domestically here as well because it sets us apart against each other but that's his core move. >> i want to finish this segment

by going to sam stein. sam, any technical defect this is morning? anybody you'd like to throw under the bus, any camera men or women or anybody that works around the set? is lighting insufficient? anybody -- >> this was so long ago. this was months ago. >> that's a throwback. >> joe, tell people what happened because people are still scarred. >> joe, please, it's a cautionary tale of how not to treat people, joe, what happened? >> am i getting lectured on appropriate behavior towards other people by donny? >> i think probably not. i think probably not. we'll just leave it at that. >> to bury this once and for all, you have the greatest crew here, the most impressive crew -- >> don't be facetious. >> i'm not! >> this is just pathetic. >> willie, can i ask you is he now being condescending to the men and women that put "morning

joe" on every morning and make our jobs possible? >> why is this happening to me? >> i go away to korea for a month and we're still talking about it. sam you have penance to pay apparently still. jeremy, great to see you, thanks as always. still ahead on "morning joe" -- >> we talk about the saturday night special and i'm for outlawing those things if we can. but i also remember that the first murder was done by cain who didn't have a saturday night special. >> that's the late evangelist billy graham speaking with tom brokaw about the weapon used in the assassination attempt on president ronald reagan. tom brokaw joins us to discuss the gun debate and to reflect on the life of reverend graham whose funeral is today. "morning joe" will be right back. have you smelled this

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conservative christian groups such as the moral majority were very active and successful in last november's elections. they promise to be more active

in the months and years ahead. now another well-known christian is raising some questions about that kind of activity. he's the reverend billy graham. he's been preaching to the nation, the world and befriending presidents for more than 30 years. he expressed some reservations about the role of religion and politics in some of these organizations. >> we have seen a revival of what is called evangelicalism in america and to have some people from either left or right come in and try to manipulate them into some political force, that's the thing that i have concerned about. this dilutes the gospel, i think, that we're preaching. i don't think that we ought to be using christians to get into partisan politics. i think we ought to stick to the issues. >> that was the late evangelist leader billy graham on "today" in 1981 in a discussion about politics and religion with some young fella named tom brokaw.

graham will be laid to rest following a funeral service at his library in charlotte, north carolina, and tom joins us now along with the chair of the department of african-american studies at princeton university, columnist for "time" magazine and professor of religion, eddie glaude, jr., joe? >> tom, that warning from billy graham came 37 years ago to you. it certainly has played itself out that way, many evangelicals now concerned that politics is actually taking a front seat for evangelical leaders ahead of spirituali spirituality. >> talk about the reverend graham and the profound influence that you saw him have on american culture over 50, 60 years that he was at the center of the evangelical movement. >> well, i kind of grew up with him. i was not a member of the flock, so to speak, but i remember seeing him on television and television did make billy graham, those great rallies he

would have in new york or minneapolis or wherever. he did drift away from this position when richard nixon took office. he was quite close to if i can son and he later said that was a mistake on his part that he ought not to have gotten as close to him politically as he did. we went through his files and found a number of things including a billy graham memo about richard nixon about what to do about vietnam and the reflection he got was from the fathers in the field, so to speak, local missionaries and others and it was actually quite astute so there was never anybody quite like him. i must tell you, joe, one of my favorite stories is that you may remember "time" magazine came without a cover story that said "is god dead" and it was based on a man who was at emory university, he was a philosopher and he went through a lot of things so billy graham came to atlanta, stepped off the airplane and one of the great atlanta reporters, a man by the named of aubrey morris, he said

"dr. graham, is god dead?" and dr. graham looked at him and said "no, of course not." "dr. graham, how do you know?" and billy graham smiled and said "because i talked to him this morning." and it was that kind of connection he had with everybody that he'd stayed in the place. so he was an important american figure, the rise he had because of television and the fact that he didn't -- he really didn't make people feel awfully guilty about what they were doing or it was not about him in the final analysis, he was not at the end saying send me a lot of money, much different than what we see on the air today. >> and of course you are at wsb the same time my family was in atlanta, in the outskirts way out in the little town in georgia which has been consumed into the metropolis but you understand how important billy graham was, especially to people in the south but all over the

world but also it's interesting you talked about how important he was to richard nixon, really to every president from eisenhower forward. i thought it was interesting that when he talked to you in 1981 that was about six or seven years after he realized that he had gotten too close to richard nixon and he had said some things that had embarrassed himself and he admitted in realtime to relijss you leaders i in '74. he said i was blinded by power and he warned them to do what they could to stay away and not make the same mistake he made. >> it's not the kind of candor you would hear today from most of the evangelists. we saw all those photographs as well. he did go to africa and he was very important in the civil rights movement because he would always insist if thto have african-americans in his audience. there are those who were

critical of him for imposing himself on the white house, although he was always welcome there, close to george bush 41 so he was a unique american figure. and i don't think we have anyone nearly like him at this point in terms of talking about values in a way that anybody could identify whether they were christians or jews or muslims or whatever. he was talking about fundamental human values. >> it's remarkable how far we have from that in terms of the evangelical leaders who supported donald trump throughout his campaign and now that he's in the white house two days ago jerry falwell, jr., was tweeting that attorney general jeff sessions is a coward. hyperpolitical actually, the antithesis of what billy graham did here. how did we get to that place where it's not as much about the faith but the politics? >> it's really interesting, it's not only jerry falwell, jr., it's franklin graham in terms of doubling down on donald trump and the political environment we

have here and there were residual traces of what we see today evident in white evangelicalism even back in the day with billy graham. you're right to talk about his position with regards to race but when we think about his position with regards to women, it wasn't very good. when we think about whether or not billy graham would translate today in terms of issues around same-sex marriage and lgbtq issues i don't think it would translate. the terrible comments he made on tape with richard nixon with regard to jewish brothers and sisters, that wouldn't translate very. we. it's interesting in the footage we showed about the relationship between evangelicalism and politics. he's responding to not just simply the political moment, he's responding to the moral majority and jerry falwell which was founded in 1979 which yolks evangelical christianity to republicanism and the republican party in interesting ways so he's seeing on the horizon the

problem that we are facing clearly today. >> eddie, you went down a checklist of some things where billy graham, in fact, a lot of evangelicals wouldn't match up neatly with what was going on today. at the same time, you did have billy graham in his later years say some things that were quite the opposite of what his son, franklin graham, said. when somebody asked him during the iraq war whether he believed that we were now in a war against islam he said no, we are in a war against poverty and hunger and disease. that's far different than what other evangelicals were saying and jesse jackson was talking about the day after he died how he would go in in chattanooga and other places and he would tear down racial barriers and as jesse jackson said, in the 1950s, that wasn't nothing. he refused to go to south africa until they allowed him to speak

to integrated groucrowds. that was radical in south africa in the 1970s, to speak in front of integrated crowds. again, the man was not perfect. and what is so remarkable about billy graham is he would have told you and always did tell you that he was not perfect, that he was a sinner and that he was humbled by the fact that he had to go to god everyday and ask for forgiveness. and i think what is remarkable about that is the grace that billy graham showed in his life not only towards others but also the grace he understood that he needed from god. and that, is that not something that is sorely lacking in evangelical leaders today? >> absolutely, joe, when i see and hear particularly white evangelicals identifying with the current political system today, i actually long for a voice like billy grahams in some certain ways. as the former president of the

american academy of religion, i understand that there's a complex debate around billy graham's theological contribution. there's some would argue that his threology is too simple. his plain spokenness diminished thes go nell particular sorts of ways. i understand that as anning a demmic question but as a social giant in some ways, someone who's influenced our culture it's clear he was self-reflective and constantly thinking about himself as a fallen, fragile creature of god and he tried to exhibit that piety in his day to day life but as you say he wasn't perfect and we need to think about how we celebrate him as the backdrop of the me too movement. his positions around gender were complicated, and we need to make mention of that. >> he was not alone in that. the fact of the matter is the

most liberal people you know you can go back and their attitudes about women were inexcusable, frankly. i think that's one of the defining issues of our time. i believe given what we're going through now at the end of the 20th century historians were look back on the 21st century and say the profound change was the place of women that this would be nobody as the century of women and it's the first time they came to the full realization of what they deserved and i think that's a huge change going on right now. everything is about evolution and changing and he changed. which is the most important thing. can i just say one thing about watching from outside the beltway so to speak? i've been looking at the chaos and the white house and i was trying to think about taking a mid-sized city in america, des moines, for example, the biggest department store chain or the bigge biggest grocery store chain oar guy who has a collection of truck stops and other things was

running the business the same way the white house is being run he would be out of business. everyday there would be comments in the business section in the newspapers, people would be leaving those enterprises because it's so chaotic and even those most enthusiastic about donald trump will have a hard time defending what is happening. this is the presidency of the united states, we're at a cross roads of extraordinarily important decisions that have to be made. the relationship with a new china now because they have a long time man who will be in power for a long time and he's taking a look at us. we saw what putin had to say the other day. so it's not just about what happens on a micro situation, it's the macro picture we have to look at. how do we present to the country and the world who we are and what we want from it? he was elected president. now be president i think is what the country wants to have him do in a way that we can count from week too week and month to month on some kind of a curve that will take us to where we need to

get to. >> we're on a minute-to-minute or hour-to-hour, not week-to-week, month-to-month. tom brokaw, great to see you. eddie, stay with us. president trump seems to suggest that executing drug dealers could help solve the opioid crisis. that's ahead on "morning joe." >> god lord. pass please. i'm here to fix the elevator. nothing's wrong with the elevator. right. but you want to fix it. right. so who sent you? new guy. what new guy? watson. my analysis of sensor and maintenance data indicates elevator 3 will malfunction in 2 days. there you go. you still need a pass. there you go. you tthey made a mistake.ompany the check they sent isn't enough to replace your totaled new car. the guy says they didn't make the mistake. you made the mistake. i beg your pardon?

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president trump addressed families and individuals affected by the opioid epidemic during a summit at the white house yesterday, just days after axios reported president trump spoke privately about executing drug dealers like they do in singapore and the philippines. he seemed to praise the idea once again. >> some countries have a very, very tough penalty, the ultimate penalty. and by the way, they have much less of a drug problem than we do. so we're going to have to be very strong on penalties. >> president trump went on to say he spoke to the attorney general about bringing lawsuits against some opioid manufacturers as part of his push for stricter penalties. the president said repeatedly combatting the opioid crisis is a priority for his administration.

sam, they've got a task force on it. they're working on it but like a lot of things they're overshadowed by a comment the president makes about executing drug dealers. >> let's keep in mind the task force has been working on this for over a year and hasn't produced much. in fact, some of the budget suggestions have been counterproductive, although the most recent one is fine. i think talk of extrajudicial killings is counterproductive. we've been through an experiment called the war on drugs, it failed, i think everyone can conceivably say that. the idea that you'll kill people who sell opioids is silly. it will never be legal here. and i think it diminishes the severity of the problem which is a serious, serious problem. we've been talking a lot about death by drugs. death by opioids and overdoses in this country are an epidemic and it's part of the reason why this president won. and to reduce that problem, to reduce the solution to, oh, if we just kill these drug dealers diminishes the severity of it. there are multiple ways to go about doing this, we're not

doing it and i think it's just a shame. >> similar to the trade war solution, he goes to the lowest most banal most uneducated simple explanation that plays right to the base. >> it goes to something different. it goes to -- where extrajudicial killings happen, this has nothing to do with drugs, it has to do with the authoritarian dictatorial impulse. the countries where you're allowed to kill people in a willy-nilly way for whatever crime are the places run by autocratic, dictators and thugs. it's not about drugs, it's about the power to say that person should be put to death, boom, dead. he likes that. he likes the -- he would love to have that kind of dictatorial -- >> luckily for us he doesn't have that power. our next guest is the senior senator from florida which just had its second mass shooting in less than two years but his invitation to that incredible bipartisan meeting on guns

apparently lost in the mail. bill nelson from florida, who was not invited to that session, joins us next. don't we need that cable box to watch tv? nope. don't we need to run? nope. it just explodes in a high pitched 'yeahhh.' yeahhh! try directv now for $10 a month for 3 months. no satellite needed.

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the nra is disputing the suggestion that donald trump is behind imposing new gun laws following his surprising embrace of implementing those new measures on wednesday's meeting with congressional leaders. the top lobbyist for the group chris cox revealed in a tweet that he met with the president and vice president at the white house last night. cox added that "we all want safe schools, mental health reform and to keep guns away from dangerous people." the president and the vice president support the second amendment, support strong due process, and don't want gun control. an hour after cox's tweet, the president himself tweeted "good, great meeting in the oval office tonight with the nra." let's bring in now from tallahasse democratic senator bill nelson of florida and, senator, always great talking to you.

i want to start quickly with just a story and i think you were there, 1995 we had a hurricane in pensacola, florida, and i said tough things about bill clinton so his people kept me out of a meeting and lawton chiles was there and he grabbed me and he said "come here, boy." and i'd not been particularly kind to lawton chiles on the campaign trail but lawton chiles knew there was a right way to do things and the wrong way to do things and we're talking about billy graham, he showed grace and he said "you can't have the meeting without the congressman." i went back to that in my mind when i saw that you being the representative of so many of those families who lost their loved ones in parkland, you were excluded from the white house meeting. can you give us insight as to why? >> joe, what you recounted was the old way of doing things when we could actually get bipartisan

agreement and you would have leaders that would be inclusive instead of always trying to divide and that i think is illustrative of the just the fa know, if you really want to solve this problem, and it is a major problem, because you know just in the past two years all the massacres that we've had in florida going back to the pulse nightclub and in the fort lauderdale airport and now this school, if you want to really get it solved, you got to bring people together. we got to get 60 votes to get anything passed in the senate. you have to have democrats and republicans coming together to build consensus. so it was counter productive. that they would want to exclude me. >> also, you look at the polls and even there was one this past week on gun safety reform in the

state of florida. we as we both know, we're a gun state. people in florida love their guns and there are a lot of them in the state of florida and yet even in those polls, there was overwhelming support for universal background checks and raising the age. i mean, you could go down the list of things. i'm just wondering we've seen republican brian mass move to support some common sense measures. what about the rest of the delegation in florida and what about the possibility of you getting those 60 votes to pass something. what's possible? >> it depends on the nra. if they go and threaten a lot of our republican brothers and sisters, that they're going to take them on in the next election. it makes it very difficult even

on something as common sense as comprehensive uniform background checks. you're right. that's off the charts. not only nationally, but in florida as well. people want that. it's common sense. and yet it's hard to get the votes on that. >> it's kathy cay in washington. to what degree does the president holding this meeting with some of your fellow senators, not yourself, coming out seemingly in favor of things the nra would never like and the next day seeming to reverse perhaps his position on leaving the window. might be reversing position. how difficult is that making it not just on the issue of guns, but on guns in particular for lawmakers like yourself to know what the white house is going to do? how does government work under these conditions. >> you remember back on the attempts to pass the immigration

legislation on daca, the kids that are dreamers. and remember the same scenario as to what you just outlined had to happen with guns. the president said he was all for taking care of the daca kids. a day or is a later, completely reversed. we're seeing if same thing now with the meeting with his delegation. now he meets with nra and completely reverses. it looks like that's where it is going. >> senator, i want to ask you a question about the composition of the world. you were excluded. what do you make of the fact there was no members -- black members of congress or members of color from the congress in that meeting whose communities and constituencies are often faced with enormous gun violence. what do you make of this conversation happening not only

without your presence or the presence of a more diverse constituency in the room. >> eddy, i think it's telling. by the way, i want to compliment you on your comments about billy graham. i think you nailed it. graham, again, was a preacher of the gospel who was inclusive. he brought people together under the gospel of unity instead of dividing. you were absolutely right on. social security symptomatic of what's happening in our society today where everybody is retreating to polls. they're getting very self interest interested highly partisan and highly rigid and we're seeing that play in to this question about what do we do in the aftermath of these massacres.

still ahead. markets drop on fears president trump's deals with terrorists could lead to trade war. his response, trade wars are good and easy to win. plus vladimir putin says his new cruise missile is better than president trump. and that did not get a response from president trump. is his strategy of not criticizing putin backfires. we'll discuss that. "morning joe" is coming back in a minute.

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this could turn everything the other way. whoever advised him on this is -- ought to be reprimanded. in all honesty, it's not going to help america. it's going to cause higher prices around here and make us less competitive. >> a day after shocking republicans on gun policy, president trump just did the same thing on trade. caught congress, wall street, and even those in the white house completely off guard. meanwhile, the administration is shutting staffs with more resignations reportedly on the way. and, of course, the word of the day is chaos. featured in headlines and news stories across the morning papers. jeb bush t guy i said from the beginning i was voting for for

good reason, he has to be thinking i told you so. watch this. >> pretty good at the one liners. he's a chaos candidate. he would be a chaos president. >> well, that being right. and as i said, jeb would have actually been a good president. it's friday. mika is going to be back on monday. >> talking with national affairs analyst. donny deutsche is here and the washington anchor for bbc world news of america. catty k. he says trade wars are good and

not only that, they're easy to win. making the case despite what most experts say. despite what cohen in his own administration says, he says they're good. >> well, yes, there's a long-term of this and republican party of course the last two believe this was herbert hoover. that didn't turn out well. >> did not turn out really well. deep in the depression, made things worse. this is actually donald trump, i guess, the populist, but this is as john wrote in the new york post today, this is ignorant belief of donald trump he held since the early 1980s. warn hatch when he says, well, whoever is advising the great donald trump should be rem reprimanded or maybe lose their job. it's donald trump who is advising donald trump as always.

and donald trump has believed this consistently for over four decades. john, the cynic in me has to believe that this is one of those things that donald trump had in case of emergencies to break the glass, like that morning that fbi agents went through paul manafort's front door. because he was talking about transgender rights and military and shocked everybody. of course nothing ever came of that. so he doesn't talk to anybody. reports that he is angry and bouncing around the white house and he's raging about chaos and then suddenly he starts rambling on about this. sure enough, we didn't talk about manafort's indictment. we didn't talk about hope hicks. people had a collapsing stock

market. looking at this economic policy that no one in their right mind supports. i wonder if this was another head bob. look, there's a little bit right now of kind of madman at the wheel quality here in the white house where i know we're going to talk about it all morning the degree of chaos as you suggested in a chaotic candidate became a chaotic president is now kind of peak chaos right now. the president is reported by many people reporters are reporting people around the president is saying he feels more isolated and he has a sense. a lot of people in the press said the last year we've been on the brink of the situation unraveling. seems like the president himself seems like the white house is on the brung of unraveling. he's kind of lashing out in various ways. he's wanted on some level deep down in parts wanted to start this trade war for a long time. touted slapping tariffs on china.

said he was going to slap tariffs on various countries throughout 2016. as you say, he's kind of reaching back to an oldy, but a goody trying to fulfill a campaign promise no one ever thought he would try to fulfill because it's a bad idea. he says he's going to do daca or this or that or the other thing. doesn't ult may will the doesn't ultimately do it. is this just a threat? >> yeah, i don't think think we are going to get these. when you start looking at all the industries that are going to be hurt. if you did have the steal tariff. i just got to believe that he knows he really stepped over the line, not only with the conse e conservative base, but even with conservatives who didn't support him and independents when he

talked about seizing people's guns without due process. of i think he needed a smoke screen. that's all donald trump worries about. worries about base. i think he needed a smoke screen for about 24 hours so he throws it out there and sure enough, who comes out, but the three nra lobbyists last night that run washington, d.c.'s nra lobbyist organization. a lot of the own members. and sure enough, they give him the clean bill of health. so now, the nra has sent the message to all of their members, this guy is okay. he's not for gun control. he's for due process. i wonder if donald trump just needed to buy some time. and maybe he did it. he didn't give a damn that billions were lost in the stock market yesterday. he got a smoke screen for 24 hours. >> you put your thumb on the problem. a smoke screen crashes the stock market. it sends shock waves around the

world. not just china, but or allies, canada, mexico, all over the place, europe scrambling to fry to figure out what to do to counteract tariffs that could be set in place next week. that meeting from the nra, signals from the president and his tweet and nra in theirs saying don't worry, everything is fine. that thing that happened in the meeting with the senators the other day, don't worry about we got to him. he's back on our side. >> let's review what happened. yesterday's abrupt announcement stunned so many people even inside the west wing. rattled the stock market. president trump saying he will impose steep new tariffs on steal and aluminum imported in the united states. gathered at the white house for a meeting that had not been on public schedule at 9:00 the night before. aides described it at a listening session. president did much of the talking. as we said, he made big news. >> people have no idea how badly our country has been treated by other countries.

we're going to be instituting tariffs. perhaps new folks will be here. we'll see you next week. thank you, everybody. thank you very much. it will be for a long period of time. >> the stock market did not senior officials told "the washington post" that staff secretary rob porter who left after allegations of spousal abuse came public had work with

chief of staff john kelly to keep those advocating four tariffs from gaining access to the president. "washington post" reporter tweeted white house person who is often understated about drama in the building just texted me to say things were wild, changing seemingly by the minute and no one knows what trump going to announce on a number of issues. it was the second day in a row republicans on capitol hill were taken aback by something the president said. the gop caucus was collectively stunned by trump's seeming embrace of many liberal gun control measures in wednesday's bipartisan meeting in gun safety. then came thursday's tariff announcements. as of yesterday evening nbc news could confirm neither house speaker paul ryan senate finance chairman or or chuck schumer had ignored what mitch mcconnell's office would not say and wayings and means committee would not answer. the speaker is hoping the president will consider the unintended consequences of this idea and look at other

approaches before moving forward. pennsylvania republican senator said imposing new tariffs on all kinds of imported steel is a big mistake that will increase cost on american consumers. cost our countries jobs and invite retaliation from other countries. senator there is no standard operating practice for this administration. every day is a new sad venture for us. joe. we commented on the show a couple of weeks ago if you look at what china is doing another leader towards china's dominance

of the globe in 2050. we've got a president that is looking back to america that ceased to exist in the 1950s. he wants to rebuild the steal industry from the days following world war ii. it's really bizarre. the world must think how bizarre it is. what other countries think that about america again trying to relive the glory days of 1955. >> right. over an industry that plemploys like 140,000 people when there are industries using steal to suffer and employ many more people than that. there's a sense that this yesterday if these tariffs do get implemented and i agree we're not sure whether anything the president says is going to come to pass, this is a major departure in 70 years ago of orthodoxy in american economic policy. there's a reason that famous

american economists who promoted free trade were also given the nobel peace prize. free trade has been linked to since the second world war. the less likely they are to go to war with each other. donald trump doesn't buy into that. this is very precarious time. china throwing weight around the world and looking outwards. russia throwing rate around the world and looking outwards. just at a time when you need stability and an anchor in the world, both of the united states and britain, my country, are kind of retreating and looking inwards. you've got this emerge accident tra trade war happening. this is a toxic mix. if the president pushing ahead, it's not too far areach to say could this be the thing that pushes the world into a period of very considerable instability. >> yes. and obviously donny, a horrible economic impact and let's start with the people who would be hurt the most. that would be american consumers. donald trump who is saying i'm

going to try by using government action. action by the centralized state to create a couple hundred,000 new jobs over the next decade. i'm going to punish 350,000 people though consumers, every time they go out and buy their cars. cars are going to be more expensive. every time they build something, it's going to be more expensive. if they're business owners, every time they build an office it's going to be -- everything is made more expensive by this. and you think about how america does it right. we don't have to go back to the 1950s. go back to 2006/2007 when fracking suddenly exploded. without the help of the federal government. the federal government got in the way more often than not. why don't we drill zside wa sid see what happened. it created a revolution.

that was letting the market do it. here donald trump is distorting the market. he's converting basic economic realities and it is the american consumer, donny, as you know and your a liberal democrat that's going to get crushed. liberally progressive. even you, a guy that reads marks before he goes to bed every night knows this will crush american consumers the worst. thank you, alex. >> concern about a crush. this week if you were concerned about donald trump being our president, in certain ways it's a good week. you really felt the noose tightening. the conspiracy leading directly to trump. the bad news if you're concerned about trump, you're really starting to see the beginning of

a corner of donald trump. what is he capable of doing at the expense of the world of the united states or the consumer to save himself. i'm concerned this is a picture of things to come. what will he do with north korea at the expense of the rest of the world. what will he do in any scenario do to do this kind of shiny toy things. hope hicks leaving is very scary. if you know people who have run companies or people at organizations there's always one or two people in there that run a company that you go to that is somehow the sanity check or somehow the calmer. that's not there anymore. as the mueller news continues to tighten and kushner news continues to tighten, a man with his hands at the controls. yes, a trade war is very concerning. what are the other things he is capable of doing at the expense of all of us to save or protect or deflect when it comes to his own hide. i'm concerned.

very scary things about donald trump, cdt. new world we're living in. new policy the president rolled out seems to anger american allies as much as it does rivals it's intended to punish. we'll bring in admiral who spent a year on the world stage. breaks down the policy fallout next on morning joe. don't we need that cable box to watch tv? nope. don't we need to run? nope. it just explodes in a high pitched

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let's go to dean of law. retired four star navy admiral. chief international security and diplomacy analyst for nbc news and msnbc. admiral, always good to see you. let's start with the tariffs. you've seen the reaction from around the world. germany calling them unacceptable. canada doing the same. what would be the impact of someone who sees the math and looks at the globe and understands how the pieces

interact with each other. 25% tariff on steal. 10% on aluminum. what would that mean for the world economy. >> i currently run a graduate school of international relations. we spend a lot of time looking at international economics, international finance, international business. there are no winners in trade wars. we know that because as you alluded to earlier, about 100 years ago, 1918, what happens? we come out of world war one. we decide we're going to isolate ourselves from if world. reject the league of nations and then we put in place the tariffs. how did that turn out? well, we cracked the global economy and you could drop a plumb line to fascism and the rise of the second world war. i think this is a very bad day globally. it's not just the impact here in the united states domestically on other industries. it's how our allies and friends or partners perceive us as withdrawing from the world.

that's a bad day by any measure as you look at the world. >> admiral, thank you very much. coming up on morning joe, vladimir putin rolls out flashy new video meant to demonstrate country's nuclear weapon's capacity which he claims to include serious new hardware. we'll talk to the former ambassador to russia straight ahead on morning joe. it takes a lot of work to run this business. but i really love it. i'm on the move all day long... and sometimes, i don't eat the way i should. so, i drink boost to get the nutrition i'm missing. boost high protein nutritional drink has 15 grams of protein to help maintain muscle and 26 essential vitamins and minerals, including calcium and vitamin d.

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to have a partner that is so skilled at what they do is indispensable, and i couldn't ask for a better partner. coming up on morning joe. former u.s. ambassador who has been blacklisted by the kremlin reacts to new reporting that bob mueller has set sites on more russian operatives for potential indictment. speaking of indictment, here's bill karins with a check on the nasty nor'easter. meant business already this morning around d.c. a lot of trees down. skoom schools canceled. power outages about quarter of a million people. the power outages will spread to the northeast a little later. overnight the snow was heavy. erie, cleveland, buffalo, syracuse new york and albany. it's a winter wonderland. it's a heavy wet snow.

heart attack snow. very difficult to shovel. extreme as far as the roads are concerned too. let's get into the maps. storm is now located to the south of long island. snowing hard now. all of new york state and snowing pretty good in southern portions of vermont and new hampshire and western maine. winds gusting at times 70-mile-per-hour from the d.c. baltimore quarter to the beaches around ocean city. now the winds picking up to the north. 76 million people at risk either high wind warning or wind advisory. worst of the winds at noon today. boston 55, cape cod at 60 or 70. we go through the afternoon, hit the peek of the wind here. especially cape cod and along the coastal beaches. besides all of this, deal with a lot of coastal flooding issues. high tide tonight and tomorrow could be just as bad as record breaking storm we saw in january, speaking about snow. difficult forecast seeing how much snow we could get. we've changed over.

the surface is still raining. top of the rock cam shows snowflakes aloft. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. hey. pass please. i'm here to fix the elevator. nothing's wrong with the elevator. right. but you want to fix it. right. so who sent you? new guy. what new guy? watson. my analysis of sensor and maintenance data indicates elevator 3 will malfunction in 2 days.

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talk to your doctor and visit humira.com. this is humira at work. but you've tested it. >> the test was excellent. some of them still have to be fine tuned and worked on. others are already available to the troops and already are battle ready. >> for the record, rights now, do you have a workable icbm that's powered by nukes that you've tested successfully. >> all of those tests were

successful. it's just each of these weapon systems is at a different stage of readiness. one of them is already on combat duty with troops. >> that's of course russian president vladimir putin in an nbc news exclues sieve interview with megyn kelly on assignment in moscow. putin was defending his claims yesterday of a new nuclear arsenal which he says includes underwater nuclear drones, hype sonic missiles and nuclear icbms impervious to defense systems. bring in director of institute for international studies at stanford university michael mcfall and here onset senior fellow on counsel foreign relations max boot. also susan dell pers owe join g

i ing us. as you listen to putin first make the speech, that sort of show and tell with all his new weapons that he claims to have and then his interview with megyn kelly. you don't just pull one off the table and start talking about it. he's upping the ante in terms of a potential new nuclear arms race. a couple are new delivery vehicles that haven't even been covered in the start treaty. there's no control on them and no inspections of them. as he said in his speech, he wanted to get our attention. he wanted us to listen. and i think we should. i think we should take this very seriously. these are serious weapons. one of them by the way is aimed at california. that nuclear torpedo is aimed at

us. we should take it serious and begin to talk about how do we control the proliferation of these weapons. >> max, what's the strategic play here? is this just putin trying to flex muscles angry at what happened in america's domestic policies over the past year? is he upset that we're now providing more assistance to the ukrainians? what is the streeategic play fo putin. >> this is politics russian style. does have a re-election coming up. the fact he's going to be re-elect suicide a conclusion, but he's nevertheless doing rattling to chin up enthusiasm despite all the sanctions. the lack of response from president trump. this morning trump is going on tirade against alec baldwin, but nothing to say about vladimir putin threatening the united states. this is a piece as we know with the fact he's not responding to the russian attacks on our

political process as admiral rogers head of cyber command said a few days ago. he still doesn't have the authorities and putin still has not paid a price that would dissuade him from further attac attacks. trump consistently looks the other way and ignores russian aggression. >> i want to ask you just to give you -- give us a sense. it's friday morning. the end of a week, eventful week as always the case with the russia story. over the course of the last week, watching bob mueller, watching the trump administration, what do you think the story has advanced to over the course of the last five days? >> first, i just want to underscore something that max just said. if this were any other time in american history, what putin said yesterday would be page one news. that would be only thing anybody would be talking about. >> of course. >> and yet instead again, because of what the russians did to us, let's be clear, they're an actor also in our domestic

politics, we're arguing amongst ourselves, fighting amongst ours, debatiing what's happenin in the mueller investigation. and the commander in chief is completely absent. astonishing to me. i have to say. there has been no reaction whatsoever to the announcement of these incredibly new revelations about russia's nuclear arsenal. with respect to the story, i see bob mueller doing his job. doing it in a very deliberative way. he is now from the reporting we've had at nbc going to release an indictment about the russians that stole those e-mails. if that's true, incredible intelligence gathering that we could actually name individuals to do that. that is setting a predicate for

others. including other americans, but maybe the wikileaks people who might be indicted also for experience to undermine the united states. >> susan to max and ambassador's point about the lack of response from the president of the united states. doesn't take a conspiratorial mind to wonder why, why is it always russia. why doesn't he push back. a guy who pushed back this morning against awelcome bald win for his impersonation of him. something so say. even in a diplomatic way. something to say about russian aggression. >> i agree. it's troubling. i also wonder about putin, does he not just have some interviews and say the things he does simply to keep tweaking donald trump and maybe even provoking him one way or the other. right now you have members of congress, trying to investigate election going to be secure come

november. we have no response. the president seems not to care. that is a fundamental pillar of our democracy. and the president seems to be willing to let them december grate into a real situation where we're going to see big problems in our country. >> mike rogers, actually, this week sounded the alarms. said no we're not doing enough about it. i'm not given the authority to fight back. >> that was extraordinary of the week. roger's testimony. i wanted to pick up something susan just said and ask a quick follow-up about this. is it possible that you know vladimir putin. not only do you know more about russia than the rest of us, but you've been face-to-face with vladimir putin. is it possible -- >> we're not exactly facebook friends anymore, but yes. >> i've known him since the spring of 1991. first time i met him. >> so is it possible to continue on what susan was saying.

when putin does this stuff, beyond the substantive merits he's saying about the weapons systems and so on. when he does this, is he in some way trying to display dominance in the world? is he trying to give a vivid illustration when he says things like this that he has donald trump under his thumb? well, first and foremost, he's going to try to win that presidential election. so as max said earlier, this was a presidential campaign speech, but secondly, yes, absolutely. this is to show that russia is back. that russia is a major world player. and the particulars of this speech was to say that we now can overcome american missile defense systems. right. we are not going to be threatened by that. my own view of that is our missile defense systems have very little capability against russia, but that's not the measu message he's sending here. message of strength. also add one more thing. it's also to lay down markers

for next round of negotiations. new start treaty expires in a couple of years. he's making it clear with this speech we're going to have to bring limits on missile defenses back to the negotiations and that's going to be very hard for any administration to do, trump or otherwise. >> max has a new column in the "washington post" titled the trump administration is in unethical league of its own. writes in parts the corruption and malfeasance of trump administration is unprecedented in u.s. history. only points of comparison are the guiilded age scandals and watergate and the bribe taking of vice president during the nixon administration. this administration is already in an unethical league of its own. misconduct revealed wednesday was worse than what president's normally experience during an entire terms. the hard part is which ethical scandal to pick. you could go to the jared kushner loan scandal for

starters this week. >> that's a huge one. it gets maj s overshadowed by a other news because there's so much kracraziness and wrongdoin we're not know kussing on the fact that the son-in-law was taking meetings that gave the family hundreds of millions of dollars in loans something we learned on wednesday and previous day we learned officials in foreign countries were actively figures out how to game jared kushner because they saw his business dealings as point of vulnerability. this is a guy who add access for a year to top national security secrets. now denied top secret clearance, but still in the white house. this is an incredible security risk and ironic because donald trump spent so much of the campaign attacking hillary clinton for supposedly compromising or secrets then you have somebody like jared kushner at the center of power. this is only one of the many scandals that we're looking at. >> max, is this limited just to donald trump? it seems to me -- i use this

phrase cascading corruption. it seems to me this is not just simply a trump problem. there are a whole bunch of other actors whok accomplice accomplice sent in allowing him to do what he's doing. >> i think he's tapping into the worst of washington. look at the fact he hired paul manafort now faces 27 criminal counts. had rick gates now a felon as his deputy campaign manager, but he's -- we know the swamp exists and instead of training it, he's pouring more wart into it. making it worse. >> we know when he left, resigned from the office of government ethics. what is that office doing in relation to this? is that just rubber stamping off of this stuff? >> what can anybody do when you have the most unethical president in our history. tone is set at the top. you see all the officials acting

in a way that would have gotten them fired in a previous administration. buying a $31,000 dining room set. first class travel. this is a low standard being set by president trump and everybody in the administration is picking up on it and can get away with anything because the guy at the top is getting away with unbelievable wrongdoing. >> ambassador, what are the real world implications as you look across the globe of a white house in chaos, of a president who blurts out that we're going to have 25% steal tariff and 10% aluminum tariff. shaking markets and allies around the world. how is the world negotiating this presidency right now? >> well, willie, that's a big question. i don't want to speak for the entire world. >> go for it. give it a shot. >> you know, i just was in munich last week. munich security conference and a lot of the world was there. my big impression of that meeting was our absence in leadership. we're not on the stage. we're not engaged in the the big world problems.

we're not talking about the big world problems. again, this example of russia, right, a major event. no response from the president. even worse, we don't have a team in place to deal with it. we don't have a secretary for arms control. assistant secretary has been one named, but not in place. it's march, 2010. it's not like the first months of the trump administration. it just feels like we're not out there. and diplomacy and national security, i always say it's a team sport. you need hundreds of people, thousands of people working it. the president a few months back said i don't need all those people. i'm just going to solve everything myself. he's not solving everything himself and it feels like an absent. real absence of american leadership. >> michael. thank you very much. we'll be reading your new column in the "washington post." max's new book is the road not taken. edward. the american tragedy in vietnam.

susan, stay with us. up next, world leader who continuously discredits the investigation in his administration. attacking the attorney general, attacking the investigators and calling it a political witch hunt. we're not talking about president trump. that also describes banglade s netanyahu. will visit the white house on monday. this as the u.s. announces when and where in jerusalem it will open the new embassy. mayor of jerusalem joins us next onset on "morning joe." ♪ ♪

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let's bring in now the mayor of jerusalem, mr. mayor. thank you for being with us. first question, a lot of talk obviously not only in the united states, but also across your region that the united states may be moving its embassy to jerusalem sooner rather than later. any ribbon cutting ceremonies planned? >> well, we're naturally coordinated with the u.s. administration and their ambassador. we are working the details. it's their announcement to make and we will do everything we can to help. it's probably going to be happening sooner rather than later. >> are you concerned as the mayor of jerusalem that obviously you're home to three of the world's great religions. are you concerned about arising

tide of violence if the u.s. embassy is in fact moved to jerusalem. >> we're not concerned with doing the right thing. doing the right thing and americans announcing and executing and moving the embassy is the right thing to do. we're not concerned about it. we've learned that if we would be scared to do the right thing, there would be never be israel. there would never be the united city of jerusalem. we just move on. we're very happy and excited about the move. it's going to happen and everybody is going to be very, very happy in israel and in the united states. >> this is a move that i have supported in the past. i'm just curious though, who is this -- you say it's the right thing to do. is it the right thing to do for arabs who are citizens of jerusalem and who are citizens in israel? >> well, when you put a shuttle on the ground in jerusalem, you find jewish roots. the fact jerusalem is the

capital of the jewish people. you read the skbiebible and you it. the fact the united states recognizes this and moves the embassy is a very simple decision to everyone else, it's the american decision, the president of the united states to make. the congress made that decision decades ago. now we're executing on it. it's a very simple thing. >> you don't see any increased security threats by this? >> no, not more than the average we have. unfortunately, some of our neighbors don't like us. it's an interesting tough neighborhood to be in. we know how to defend ourselves. we're not moved by threats. we just do the right things. >> is there still a possibility of a two-state solution in your region or do you agree with cynics who say now, because of the breakdown of the peace process, it just may be a one-state solution moving forward? >> there are different scenarios for peace. they all go through cooperation

and peace negotiations which unfortunately is not happening right now. the move -- moving of the embassy and the recognition of the united states and the president trump, which we commend him for the move, is a very simple one. you mustn't mix that with anything else. we move on with our lives with the embassy in jerusalem. >> mr. mayor, let me ask you this question on a different topic. one of the -- a huge story in israel that gets remarkably little attention here is the question of corruption charges that the police want to bring against the prime minister. a member of your party. you can't probably speak to this with perfect objectivity in the sense you're political allies. because it's such a big deal potentially, try to just explain what's it about. what's the story? what are the corruption charges? where do you think that stands and what political implications for the country? >> i have no problem with the people -- you know, the police inquiring and checking out if

there's any false doing, false, wrongdoing. unfortunately, this gets lots of titles, and it seems like it's not a very clean -- it's like when the research -- when the policemen go to the different people, it's all over the news before the police actually inquire. it's unfortunate. we have no problem with the fact police are inquiring about the prime minister or anybody else. but we need more quiet. >> but they're recommending charges be brought against the prime minister, right? >> well, not exactly, not yet. this is the police. i've seen less than 50% of the cases that the police recommends to -- the legal system, to check out, to indict people, then 50% of the cases, people come out with no charge. so the fact that the police wants the system to check it out means nothing yet. people in israel, democracy.

they're not guilty. they are innocent until proven otherwise. the benefit of the doubt which is over 50% of the cases in israel must be given to the prime minister and we have to let the prime minister do his job. >> two quick questions. one is there was a news report late last year that the train station near the western wall was going to be named after donald trump. is that actually happening? >> it's still early, but we would like to recognize president trump for his -- and commend him and thank him for what he's done for the fact that he's moving the embassy and the recognition, the deep recognition of jerusalem as the capital of the jewish people. >> so you'll name the train station after him? >> we will seriously consider this. >> my other question is about gun control. which is -- we're obviously hotly debating in our country. israel has a fairly stringent gun control regime. can only own one gun. there's limits on the type of gun.

what advice would you offer our lawmakers as someone who's lived through a different regime than we have? >> i think we look at gun control in a wider context in israel. the men and women go to the army. people in israel are well trained to use guns. if, god forbid, there's a war, seven times bigger than the regular army, we all go and fight for our country. israelis are willing to fight for their peers and friends. that same knowledge and dna is actually used against terror as well. less than 2% of the israeli public have guns. it's strictly controlled by the national government. you have to prove why you need a gun. and you got to be well trained. and you have to -- people want to make sure that guns are given to the right people, the good people. so the good guys know how to use guns. and the bad guys find it very difficult time to find guns. so the next phase, god forbid there's a terror attack, in many cases you see in jerusalem people run to the scene. a third of the cases, a third of the cases, neutralizing

terrorists, are done by civilians in less than 60 seconds. so this is -- this dna is very, very powerful. and there's no misuse of guns in our country. >> all right, mr. mayor, thank you so much for being with us. >> pleasure. >> we greatly appreciate it. we've got some big shows lined up from washington next week. we're going to be live on capitol hill, starting monday. and we're back in just three minutes. stay with me, mr. parker. when a critical patient is far from the hospital, the hospital must come to the patient. stay with me, mr. parker. the at&t network is helping first responders connect with medical teams in near real time... stay with me, mr. parker.

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i'd say heck of a week, but it's been a heck of two weeks. heck of a month. heck of a year and a half. how do you sum up the last week in 15 seconds? >> unbridled chaos of the last week. accelerating. all i can say is i actually don't think it's going to slow down next week or the week after. i think everybody's got to get their seat belts on. we're in for a rough ride. >> i think it's just going to get worse. he's losing key aides, trusted advisers. i don't see how it gets any better. >> the spiral. a strange melancholy. the demolition of possibility in the country. >> we have a president that is feeling cornered and isolated. be afraid. be very, very afraid. >> this is dark. >> wow. >> you know -- >> thank god it's friday, joe. >> wow. okay. that was very cheerful. you know, we've got two "washington post" stories

talking about how congress is taking no action on immigration. despite a looming deadline. congress is taking no action on guns. despite the fact americans want more gun safety laws. it seems the only person in washington that is moving forward, getting things done is bob mueller. and if that's the washington donald trump wants, that's the washington donald trump is going to get. thank you so much for being with us this week. we greatly appreciate it. please stick around. stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage. >> thanks so much, joe. that was ending on a dark note. so i better light it up this morning. starting with feeling the spotlight. the president shocked wall street, capitol hill and his own white house, announcing new tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum. >> i'm surprised whoever advised him on this is, ought to be reprimande